


Drenched, Like Red Silk

by readytobebolder



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Flowers and Blood, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mighty Nein is a Family, Mollymauk Tealeaf Dies, Mollymauk Tealeaf Lives, Nonbinary Mollymauk Tealeaf, Returning Home, Xhorhaus, back from the dead, tw: gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 04:18:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19124431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readytobebolder/pseuds/readytobebolder
Summary: A pitiful sound leaves their mouth, vocal chords sore, limbs clumsy with unuse as six wonderful, familiar figures and a stranger turn to them, Beau freezing and Yasha’s hands flying to her mouth. There’s a wail escaping their throat, then, a ghost trying to reach for them and for a moment, Fjord takes a step forward and almost tries to put his arm between the tiefling and the rest, disbelieving.“By the Gods,” Caleb breathes.





	Drenched, Like Red Silk

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything in a while but I had a nightmare of Molly choking on roots.

Rosohna is dark. 

The creatures that dwell in it belong in it, revel in it, and Mollymauk watches out the window with a blanket around their shoulders, still shivering, still cold, even after the warm bath Yeza had set up as soon as they’d stumbled through the door, guided by a divine desperation pulling from deep within them, all the way from an unmarked grave. Their hair, dark and wet and longer now is plastered against their eyes but they do not bother to brush it away. No, Mollymauk’s arms are locked to their sides.

It is so, so cold.

“You should sleep,” the halfling speaks up, looking nervously between the tiefling and the door, still not understanding much of this individual. They’d barely spoken much except for - well, a few key words that let him understand that his wife knows him. “You um, haven’t since you arrived. It’s been a few days, are you sure -”

Mollymauk is not listening, stuck to the window, watching outside, waiting for nothing and everything to happen. They should’ve been here. The Moonweaver isn’t visible in this obscure sky, there’s only darkness and Mollymauk wants to weep, openly and loudly, wants to scream but their voice is tucked under their ribs. Yeza has been patient, although they do not care, either, that he is. All they know is that Sehanine has guided them to an empty, cold, stone home with nothing to show. Everything is unfamiliar and their eyes are perpetually op -

“But you know, if you’d listened to me, maybe we could’ve technically solved this much sooner, technically,” a voice rings, accent thick, and Yeza turns to the front door.

Molly’s voice rises up their throat and they move for the first time in almost three days, stumbling towards the new, the old voices, the ones they recognize, they love, they miss, they ache for.

“Jester, he knows you’re scrying on - Mollymauk?”

A pitiful sound leaves their mouth, vocal chords sore, limbs clumsy with unuse as six wonderful, familiar figures and a stranger turn to them, Beau freezing and Yasha’s hands flying to her mouth. There’s a wail escaping their throat, then, a ghost trying to reach for them and for a moment, Fjord takes a step forward and almost tries to put his arm between the tiefling and the rest, disbelieving.

“By the  _ Gods _ ,” Caleb breathes and Fjord snaps out of it the moment Yasha rushes to grab Molly before they fall. “By the Archeart -”

“MOLLY!” Jester screams, running to their long lost friend and they’re vomiting all over the floor, blood and dirt and flowers and roots, heaving out every poisonous thing they’ve kept within their body for months in the Shadowfell. “Molly! M-Molly, don’t worry, I’ll - I’ll heal you!”

“What’s going on? How -” Fjord’s eyes are wet and he interrupts himself with a choked gasp, hand running through his hair, blood reaching his feet as it slides through the cracks of the stone floor.

“Yeza! When did they get here?!” Nott asks his husband, eyes wide.

“They got here three days ago! They - they just told me they - they knew you!” he replies quickly. “Called you their family, I guessed they were important!”

“They are,” Yasha murmur as Jester sobs, her blue hands on Molly’s back as they keep heaving over and over again, the sound resembling noises she’d heard in nightmares. “What’s wrong with them? Jester, do you -”

“I don’t know, I don’t know!” she cries, fat tears rolling down her face.

“Caduceus!” Beau turns to him and the firbolg seems to snap out of it, his eyes leaving the tiefling to stare at the monk before he springs into action. “Do - do something, man!”

“They need to let it out, I suppose,” he told the group, kneeling on the pool of red dirt, gripping their jaw gently as they sob for relief. “It’s alright, it’s okay. Sorrow must’ve entered your body when your soul found its way back to it. It’s understandable, you have a lot of people that got hurt when you fell.”

Mollymauk does not know this man but his touch feels familiar, like the echo of something they once knew. Not like Lucien, not like the powers that drive their blood to act one way or another, but like the Moon above them. So they come loose under his fingers, eyes closing, their blood gathering on their lashes and their tongue as he grasps the root of something within their mouth and  _ pulls _ .

Everyone watches, horrified, as Caduceus pulls a clump of wildflowers from them, a torrent of blood washing petals away and suddenly Molly can breathe, coughing wildly, their head feeling light and their lungs clearing up. They hear someone stumbling into something, probably Caleb by the Zemnian curse that follows, and Mollymauk begins to cry with relief, leaning into those big hands, into Yasha, into Jester.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright,” Caduceus whispers, the strange creature wrapping his hand around the back of their neck, divine magic flowing into Molly’s sore body. “Forgive me. This was caused by me. I did not mean for you to feel this pain, just for you to rest. I am very sorry.”

“You made - you told us the land would remember him,” Beau rubs at her cheeks, wet with emotion, wanting nothing more than to gather Molly in and punch them in the throat. Then maybe hug them. “Did you make fucking plants grow on them?!”

“They were dead,” Caduceus replies, giving Beau an apologetic look. 

“There was a fucking chance!” she barks out at the one person who hadn’t known, the one person who had never known Mollymauk. Jester was still crying into Molly’s shoulder, clutching at their shirt, trembling, unable to look at the pile of dirt in front of them. “They came back before! Why - we let them die!”

“We didn’t  _ let _ anything happen, Beauregard,” Caleb replied, as calmly as he could, extending a hand towards her and leaning on the wall. “It was an unfortunate -”

“For who? For us? Or for them? Fuck’s sake, Caleb, they were only three fucking years ol -”

“I’m here.”

The room laps into sudden silence as the gravely, sore, haunting voice of Mollymauk interrupts Beauregard. They pant a bit, spitting dirt out of their mouth, rubbing the corner of their mouth before closing their eyes.

“I’m here,” they repeat, wheezing before giving out a loud cough.

“Don’t speak, Molly, don’t, you probably need like, so much medicine,” Jester sniffles, voice trembling, her hands running through their hair. “L-let’s get you to your room.”

“They don’t have a -”

“Mine,” Yasha spoke, standing only to pick up Mollymauk’s thin, frail body, lifting it easily, the tiefling curling against her warm chest. Their tail tries to wrap around her arm but they’re too weak. Too tired. They finally feel like they can breathe and it makes them remember that sleep exists, if only because it means they won’t taste gravedirt. “They’ll sleep with me.”

“Okay,” Jester says, to placate her, knowing that nobody of the Nein would be sleeping in their room tonight. Perhaps Caleb. Maybe Beau. 

Molly is laid on Yasha’s bed, on their back, and for an awful, horrid moment the group sees them slide into the mattress with blood on the corners of their mouth, on their eyes, their shirt still torn around the center of their chest and Lorenzo -

Mollymauk moves on their side, coughing, and it seems as if the room can breathe again. Nott appears with a glass of water and Molly drinks like they haven’t in what feels like a lifetime. They don’t know how long it’s been. Caleb’s hair is longer. Beau wears a strip of familiar fabric to hold her hair up. Little by little, they begin to feel a bit more… there. A bit more real.

Not enough yet, though.

“Would you like more?” Nott asks, and they nod slowly, the goblin rushing to grab more water when Caduceus merely lifts his hand and mutters an incantation, water sliding into Molly’s parched lips, the tiefling starting to weep at how cool, how pure, how intensely  _ alive _ it feels to drink it. Jester feels something unravel in her chest as their tears come clear and she can’t hold it anymore, throwing her arms around them before just bursting into loud tears.

“Don’t even die again!” she cried out, the purple tiefling panting once they finished swallowing, going a bit limp against the bed but managing to throw their tail over Jester. 

Yasha’s hand is covering her own eyes but they can hear her weep as well and Beau sits by the bed, leaning her head against their horn. Nott climbs on the bed. And Fjord and Caleb sit a bit away, but close enough. The room fills with the soft murmur of Beau starting to talk, little by little explaining the things that they’d missed, so many events and adventures and experiences.

Caduceus watches from afar, like a ghost, a passenger only. He’s on the doorway and he watches as Fjord eventually climbs on the bed with the rest and Caleb rests his forehead on the tiefling’s ankle, his hand moving to grasp their foot.

He goes back to the entrance, watches the blood that was spilled, touches it to confirm it is old, stale, not theirs. Otherwise they would be dead again. Caduceus picks the roots and flowers, the petals drenched, like red silk, and he feels the Wildmother breathe uncomfortable at the presence of utter death in the air.

Unnatural. Unwanted. Unpreceded. 

When he glances back into the room, they’re all asleep.


End file.
